Vocabulary is a topic that is close to my heart. From a very early age, speech and its nuances have been a major point of interest: although I was born and have lived in Canada my entire life, I was (I used to say) born with a British accent. My parents came to Canada eight years before my birth with their best friends another couple with whom they chose to emigrate from London. I was taught to speak by the four of them, and so even when I started school I sounded like I’d just gotten off the boat. I was teased relentlessly. To this day I retain some of my accent.

Through my school years, I paid particular attention to the English language. Grammar, even in speech, is a big deal for me. You won’t catch me saying ‘anyways’ or ‘ain’t’ unless I mean to, and never shall a double negative be uttered when I mean ‘no.’ And so the problem I encounter when writing dialogue is having to pay attention not only to what my characters say, but also to how they speak.  Speech patterns vary from background to background, depend on education (sometimes) as well as geography, not only taking into consideration the setting of the story but where their parents lived even before they were born.

It dawned on me while I listened to a cashier in a store that though we come from the same province, ‘she don’t care what her grammar’s like.’ And I have no example of this in my novel. Vocabulary isn’t just the use of big or small words. It’s not even just about accents. Grammar is a huge part of who we all are.

I must study speech patterns more.

 

The jig is almost up on my fiction blog. Head on over to read the next part of the gripping saga of Jupiter and Xavier: http://lindaghillfiction.wordpress.com/2014/04/25/v-is-for-vision/